FBI Agent Quits After Trump DOJ Blocked Probe Into Agent Who Killed Renee Good

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FBI agent Tracee Mergen resigned after Trump Justice Department and FBI leadership pressured her to drop an investigation into an ICE agent for the killing of Renee Good.

It has been two weeks since a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent named Jonathan Ross shot and killed Ms. Good in Minneapolis during a hotly disputed incident that was caught on camera.

Trump Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem rushed to label the 37-year-old Good a “domestic terrorist” whose killing was justified, and Trump himself attacked the woman.

Amid new reports of attempts to target Good instead of Ross in the investigation of the shooting, The New York Times reports that Mergen resigned over the case:

The agent, Tracee Mergen, left her job as a supervisor in the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis field office after bureau leadership in Washington pressured her to discontinue a civil rights inquiry into the immigration officer, Jonathan Ross, according to one of the people. Such inquiries are a common investigative step in similar shootings.

Ms. Mergen’s resignation was only the latest shock wave to have emerged from the Justice Department’s handling of the shooting of Renee Good, an unarmed mother who was killed on Jan. 7 as she was behind the wheel of her Honda Pilot.

After the incident, several Trump administration officials described Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist,” accusing her of trying to ram Mr. Ross with her vehicle. But a video analysis by The New York Times showed no indication that he had been run over.

But there are new details on the Trump administration’s efforts to shift blame to Good. In a new report by MS NOW correspondents Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, sources say a court rejected the effort to target Good as “weak”:

After Good was killed on Jan. 7, FBI agents drafted a search warrant to obtain her car to reconstruct the path of bullets that an ICE officer shot into the vehicle. But they were instructed to redraft their warrant and change the subject of the investigation from a civil rights probe to an investigation into a suspected assault on an officer, the people said. A federal magistrate judge rejected that warrant, noting that Good was already dead and could not be considered a suspect for a warrant.

It was widely reported that the Justice Department chose not to investigate the ICE officer who shot and killed Good, but the details about how top Justice officials directed the altering of the investigation and search warrant — and how it was rejected as weak by a federal judge — have not been previously reported.

It’s extremely rare for judges to reject federal prosecutors’ requests for search warrants, as the standard for evidence needed to grant one is low. Prosecutors and investigators need to only show probable cause that they will find evidence of a crime in the location they wish to search.

The news comes as protests in Minneapolis over the killing and the ICE operation continue.

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